


Coming Home

by Weasleasley (Rohirrim_Writer)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Addressing internalized transphobia, Ally Ginny Weasley, Body Dysphoria (slight), Character Witnesses Heavy Petting, Chaser James Sirius Potter, Communication, Discussion of Genitals, Elements of internalized cis-heteronormativity, Emotional Intellegence, F/M, Fear of Coming Out, Gender Exploration, Gender Identity, Gendering Hair, Gendering Makeup, Harry Potter Next Generation, Hogwarts, Hogwarts First through Fourth Year, M/M, Mentions of Gay Albus Severus Potter, Mentions of Masturbation, Mentor Teddy Lupin, Multi, No pairing - Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary James Sirius Potter, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Off Screen Locker Room Talk, Questioning Sexuality, Quidditch, Safe Home Enviornment, Social Anxiety, Strong Familial Relationships, Unintended Transphobia, discussions of consent, epilogue compliant, family acceptance, feelings of inadequecy, gender questioning, harry potter is a good dad, mentions of sexuality, pronoun changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22573909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rohirrim_Writer/pseuds/Weasleasley
Summary: His father had always spoken of Hogwarts as his first real home. James had no reason to believe that for him it would be any different. Maybe it wouldn’t be like his first home, James already had a perfectly good one of those, but it could certainly be a second home. A home away from home.
Relationships: Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Fleur Delacour/Bill Weasley, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Teddy Lupin/Victoire Weasley
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69
Collections: HP TransFest 2020





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my wonderful sensitivity reader and beta! Without whom I would have never finished this or had the courage to start new WIPs featuring trans characters. Thank you to the moderators and curators of this incredible event and everyone who participated.

James Sirius Potter doesn’t feel like a boy. That is to say, he loves quidditch, and swimming in the pond by the Weasley’s, and hiding dung bombs in his father’s robes. 

But then again, so did his sister, so did his cousins. He wasn’t quite sure that really made him a boy anymore. He found himself staring into the mirror more and more these days not quite sure what he was looking for. 

Sometimes at night, after the whole house had gone quiet and he was sure everyone was asleep he would take his hidden things out from beneath the floorboard under his night stand and carefully put the blush onto his cheeks with his fingertips. He would stare into the foldable, half-mirror, half-brush Rose had left at the Potter’s after a sleepover once, to see if maybe this was what he was looking for.

James didn’t really feel much of anything to be honest. At some point he started pretending, just so everyone else wouldn’t see. It wasn’t normal for 11 year old boys not to feel anything was it? To not feel like a boy, but not feel like a girl either. 

At the muggle park he had seen a group of muggles playing tag, shrieking and yelling about “cooties”. His father had told him they weren’t real and James had no problem believing him. Surely if such a thing existed James would have felt it? James had yet to feel anything romantically, or otherwise, for guys or girls. 

These thoughts were things James could push to the back of his mind for the most part. Before Hogwarts things were simpler. It didn’t take long for James to realize that Hogwarts wouldn’t have the same warmth for him as home. 

His father had always spoken of Hogwarts as his first real home. James had no reason to believe that for him it would be any different. Maybe it wouldn’t be like his first home, James already had a perfectly good one of those, but it could certainly be a second home. A home away from home. 

Except it wasn’t. The dorms were new and strange and James suddenly felt things he had never experienced before, let alone confronted. Some ugly monster inside of him seemed to uncurl and stretch its limbs. 

James changed in the bathroom, though he couldn’t exactly tell you why. He missed Al and almost wished he’d been sorted into Slytherin. He missed his parents. He missed his mother’s makeup, hidden in the floor of his upstairs bedroom. 

He thought once classes began that perhaps things would be different. He would have a distraction, he would make friends. He would stop feeling like he was stuck in this in between. The monster would be quiet again. 

But classes only seemed to make it worse. Watching his peers, James didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He wanted to do the right thing, say the right thing, he needed to or they would know. And the monster got bigger. 

It helped having his cousins there. He always had someone to sit with, even if he started to wonder if he belonged there too. What they would think if they knew the secrets that James holds inside. Secrets he doesn’t understand.

When the winter holidays finally came James was eager to be home and for a while it felt like everything might be back to normal again. He was James Sirius Potter, of course he was. He had his old things, he had his mother kissing him over the messy hair on his forehead and his father pulling him into solid hugs and quidditch in the backyard, and sometimes his blush on his nose and his cheeks when he goes to bed that he doesn’t wash off in the morning. 

It isn’t so bad this time, when he gets on the train for Hogwarts. He thinks maybe he can do this. Maybe he doesn’t have to worry about what he does belonging anywhere, so much as whether it is good or bad. Maybe whatever he does is just him, James Sirius Potter, whatever that means. James can be good, he thinks, so he puts it out of his mind. 

Except it turns out that James isn’t so good at being good. His father was a troublemaker, Headmistress McGonagall says when he finds himself in her office, and his father before him. She expected as much. James wonders whether this is the only thing she suspects. He starts to feel the monster stirring again. 

Teddy talks to him after this, lets him know about the cloak and the map. They sneak out to Hogsmeade together and James eats so much Honeyduke’s he thinks he might burst. He doesn’t. Teddy changes his hair that day, wears it long like a girls. James wonders what it feels like. If Teddy feels like a girl sometimes too. He thinks about asking him. He doesn’t. 

James tries out for the quidditch team his second year. He briefly wonders if he is just doing so because his mother plays for the Harpies and his dad made seeker his first year. The truth is that James just really likes playing quidditch. He makes the team, as a practice player. He’s playing chaser. He prefers it that way. He never really liked just sitting around waiting to spot the snitch. 

His parents are ecstatic. He wonders if they would be proud of him if he…well he doesn’t quite know. If he were different he guesses. He is different, he guesses. They’re proud of him nonetheless. 

Teddy comes to the games high up in the bleachers and James sits on the bench far below on the grass, in his kit, in case they need a substitution. They never do. Even from the distance, James recognizes him. His teal hair is like a beacon. Teddy could make it look like whatever he wanted, make himself look however he wanted. James wonders if he would make himself look different, if he could change how he looked. 

He keeps thinking about this in the locker room after. He doesn’t need to shower, he hasn’t played, so he just changes out of his outer robes and throws on a muggle coat to make the walk back up to the castle. Some of the boys do shower though and as he walks by James’s gaze lingers, for what he knows is a second too long. 

Some part of him wants to know if that’s what his body looks like, looking from the outside in. That isn’t what James sees when he stares into the mirror, waiting and waiting. He goes back to his dorms, walking with his cousins and forgets all about it. 

James walks in on Teddy and Victoire that summer. He doesn’t see anything, not really, and they hadn’t been doing anything particularly risqué as Aunt Hermione would call it, but Teddy’s hand is under her shirt and it makes James blush, sputtering and stuttering and fleeing as soon as he can. He thinks maybe he should have joked about it. The other boys do, in the locker room. He tried it once and no one suspected a thing, but he felt dirty after, like he needed to brush his teeth and take a shower. 

Teddy comes to talk to him later, to make sure he is alright. The thing is, he is. It didn’t bother him, not really. After all, he can’t tell Teddy that he was thinking about what it would be like to have breasts, can he? 

He thinks about it a lot for the next couple of days. He wishes it was just that, a few days but it stretches into weeks and he will be going to Hogwarts again soon and he still imagines it sometimes. Sometimes, when he sits in class, he imagines that his classmates are wondering too. He imagines he is not the only one and these are completely normal thoughts to have. He finds it easier to talk to them after that. He imagines his potions partner wishes he didn’t have hair on his balls, and that the girl that sits across from him in charms sometimes wishes that she had a prick instead. 

He becomes popular, at least that’s what Al says, but he doesn’t notice. He’s stopped doing his hair entirely, letting it grow long enough to curl around his ears. He notices for the first time how long his eyelashes are, when his bangs start to hang far into his eyeline. He hears girls talk about him in the hall, the boys talk about the girls interested in him in the locker room. He thinks this body must be good. He tries very hard to like it. 

And he does. For all James has felt not quite right and confused and in between, he likes himself. Teddy comes for the first ever game he plays in. He sees him in the stands, his hair long like Uncle Bill’s but not long like Fleur’s. It’s pulled back halfway into a ponytail. It’s still teal. 

James almost misses the point thinking about it. Afterward he meets up with him right away, forgoing the locker room and the shared showers that James is still uncomfortable with for reasons he can’t identify. 

James jokes with Teddy about his long hair and Teddy seems upset by this. James gets the dirty feeling again, like he needs to brush his teeth and shower off more than just the drying salty sweat off his body. He still isn’t very good at being good. 

Teddy offers him a hair band from around his wrist and shows James how to pull his hair up into the same style. He hadn’t realized his hair was that long. He asks Teddy if this makes him a girl, it’s a joke, but Teddy doesn’t laugh. He gets a look that James only sees on adults. He realizes Teddy is an adult now. 

“Are you a girl?” Teddy asks. James doesn’t know. He doesn’t know why his heart stops, why he suddenly can’t breathe, why something an awful like a monster tightens around his chest. He thinks about all the times he played pranks with his friends, planting stink bombs and hiding puking pasties in each others food. He thinks about playing quidditch and coming off the pitch stinking and crusted in dirt and mud. He thinks about saying no. He thinks about the blush. 

“I don’t know,” he doesn’t know why he says it. 

“Okay,” Teddy says. James doesn’t feel like it’s okay. He feels like he is stuck in that place, in the in between again. He feels the monster stirring more, clawing at his throat, although maybe he really just feels like he needs to cry.

Teddy doesn’t ask him anything else, instead he tells him about graduated life, about getting an apartment and trying to learn the spell Mom always used to clean the stuck on dishes. James is glad. The feeling in his throat goes away after a while. He even forgets that he doesn’t know if he is a girl for a minute. 

James thinks about it that night though. He thinks about it when he is putting his pajamas on and he is forced to confront his penis. This is something he avoids, except to pee and when he sometimes gets erections that won’t go away in the morning and he has to take care of them in the shower. 

He thinks about it then, what it would be like to have a different body, but when he does that it usually takes care of the problem pretty quick. He goes flaccid in his hand and he finishes his shower quickly and efficiently. 

He doesn’t see Teddy for a while. He owls, but he’s too busy with his new job to visit for any of James’ games. Teddy asks James in a letter, “ _ Do you prefer to be referred to by she and her? It can just be for when we talk to each other, if you like _ .” James doesn’t answer. He’s never thought about it before. 

She tries it in class the next day. Whenever the teacher calls on her, she switches it in her head. When her friends talk to her and about her at the dinner table, she keeps doing it, feeling the whole day like she is keeping a secret. It feels like dress-up. Like when she tried on her mother’s high heel shoes and didn’t like how it looked or felt at all. It fit right in some places and all wrong in others and it left James with a headache. 

The next day he wrote Teddy.  _ No _ , he said. 

At Christmas Grandma Molly tells him to cut his hair. His mom protests fiercely at this and tells her to keep her heteronormative opinions about masculinity away from her children thank you very much. James wonders if she knows. Molly apologizes, to him not just his mother, and he feels better somehow. All he knows is it has loosens the knot that formed in his stomach when she said it. 

His mother does a French braid in his hair, like she used to do on Lily, before she decided she wanted to do her hair just like Dominique, while he sits at the kitchen table. She’s teasing, he can tell, but he still keeps it on all day. He wonders if this will be like with the names, fitting in some ways, but not in others, but it never does. He wears it to bed and wakes up with it. 

Teddy comes over. He’s alone, Victoire is in France with her mother’s side of the family. They play a game of quidditch in the sharp cold, even though it’s high noon. Afterward they sit outside, Teddy has cast some spells that James hasn’t learned yet that keep the worst of it at bay. 

It takes him a long time to say it and Teddy doesn’t try to break the silence so they sit there in the silence for quite some time before James speaks. 

“I don’t think I’m a boy,” he says. Teddy stays quiet and James is glad. “I don’t think I’m a girl either.” He wants to at least turn to look at Teddy, so see what he might look like. To see if Teddy looks confused, or angry, or maybe disgusted. James wonders if he is disgusted with himself sometimes and that’s why he expects it, but he doesn’t want to be. 

“I think I’m something in between.” James says finally. “Like, maybe both, at the same time, or maybe neither.” He isn’t quite sure. He already thinks what he has already said is impossible. He wants Teddy to understand though. Teddy would understand more than anybody, he thinks. Teddy who can change his hair, or his face, or his body. Teddy who is always in between. 

“Lots of people feel that way Jamie. They have a names for it. Would you like to hear about it?” Teddy says, like it’s easy, like it’s simple, like it hasn’t been eating James from the inside out since as long as he could remember. 

“Ya.” He hears himself say. And Teddy tells him. About gender binaries. About agender and bigender and genderqueer, and nonbinary. Teddy talks to him about gender expression and gender roles. He wonders how his parents never talked to him about any of this. How he has a gay brother and he never knew that someone could be trans, not like this. He wonders if maybe some of his classmates are and he just doesn’t know. It make him almost sad, and maybe a little bit angry and maybe a little more confused. 

He feels a lot. 

Teddy stops to ask him if how he is feeling and if he wants to keep talking. 

“No,” he says. 

Teddy seems concerned, but James can’t bring himself to reassure him. He’s wondering what this means for him. What this means for his mom braiding his hair, or liking to wear blush, or how he’s started to think about boys  _ and _ girls when he touches himself in the shower in the morning and how afterwards he wonders if they would treat him like a boy or a girl if he let someone touch him in real life and how that makes him not want to be touched. 

He doesn’t say any of this to Teddy. 

Teddy stays for Christmas, but he leaves after to meet up with Victoire. James feels a pang of loss. He still has so many things he wants to talk to Teddy about if he could just bring himself to say them. 

Before Teddy leaves he asks James a new question. 

They try it out for size. James thinks for the first time they have found something that fits. 


End file.
